I've been sitting on this item all day. Technically, it's about patents and the like, and even I understand I've been beating this dead horse so often it almost looks like it's alive. However, this is an interesting opinion piece by Craig Hockenberry, long-time employee at The Iconfactory, one of my favourite software development houses - these guys breath software and beautiful design, and employ one of my favourite artists, David Lanham. The gist of his story? Software patents are killing the independent developer scene.

The problem is, this is more or less completely factually incorrect. No one has a patent on a "grid of icons."

You underestimate intelligence of corporate legal staff and stupidity of US patent system. There are many crafty ruses to make a generic claim over a broad idea to look as if it is not and then sue people, who use the idea. And now we all are watching scrambles of such kind in The Big Bay Patent Fighting Arena. Obscure, cryptic Legaleeze is just one of those ruses. As an author of a patent, who worked with a patent attorney, I know what I'm talking about.
The post IS factually correct and a lot of common ideas are now covered by patents in one or another clever way.